Global trends in aquatic animal tracking with acoustic telemetry

Abstract

Animal tracking provides integral spatiotemporal information that contributes to the growing field of movement ecology.AT is one of the main approaches to track the movements of aquatic animals.

Sounding the Call for a Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds

“…In addition to these benefits, the global sharing of such an expansive database-from potentially numerous contributors-holds the potential for multiple broadscale collaborations on regional and international trends of PAM detections. Similar efforts have been achieved in related fields, like acoustic telemetry (e.g., Hussey et al, 2015;Sequeira et al, 2019;Lédée et al, 2021;Matley et al, 2021), and visual censusing of marine fauna (e.g., Langlois et al, 2020), fostered by open forums and working groups to develop such research. We also discuss some of the technical challenges in developing this platform, historical hurdles that may have prevented previous attempts at such global data sharing environments, and a potential way forward for building this resource.…”

A Systematic Review of Acoustic Telemetry as a Tool to Gain Insights Into Marine Turtle Ecology and Aid Their Conservation

“…For example, fisheries and elasmobranch studies have utilized tightly gridded arrays to triangulate locations of individuals for more finescale location data and have analyzed social interactions among individuals (Armansin et al, 2016;Binder et al, 2018;Becker et al, 2020). While differences in life histories, morphology, and behavior may deem some approaches inapplicable to marine turtles, there is much to gain from reviewing studies from fields where acoustic telemetry has been more widely utilized, such as fisheries (see reviews: Heupel and Webber, 2012;Donaldson et al, 2014;Hussey et al, 2015;Matley et al, 2021b). Currently, one of the main limitations to marine turtle acoustic studies is that transmitters are applied externally, which reduces the retention time compared to transmitters surgically implanted in fish and shark species (Smith et al, 2019;Smukall et al, 2019;Kennedy et al, 2020).…”

“…Despite its limitations, acoustic telemetry's capacity for answering important research questions is growing due to its advantages in providing spatial information on hard-to-monitor species and with the proliferation of acoustic tracking networks (Bangley et al, 2020;Matley et al, 2021b). With data-sharing within networks, acoustic studies can potentially span coastal regions and even ocean basins and inform migration paths and long-distance movements of marine species (Guttridge et al, 2017;Young et al, 2020).…”

“…Less common and perhaps underutilized in marine turtle biotelemetry is acoustic telemetry (Hussey et al, 2015). This method is widely used in fisheries and has the ability to provide fine-scale spatial information on a scale of tens to hundreds of meters at a lower cost than other biotelemetry technologies, depending on receiver set up and detection ranges (Heupel et al, 2006;Hussey et al, 2015;Zeh et al, 2015;Matley et al, 2021b).…”

“…Organizations such as the Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) and FACT Network create regional and global networks that facilitate data sharing among members and encourage standardized data collection and analysis protocols. While challenges still exist in creating compatibility between transmitters and receivers of different manufacturers, these networks are working toward increasing the spatial scale of studies as well as the overall capacity of acoustic telemetry to address questions related to the ecology of marine species, such as marine turtles (Whoriskey, 2015;Bangley et al, 2020;Young et al, 2020;Matley et al, 2021b;Reubens et al, 2021).…”